Each additional daily cup associated with reduction in risk of nearly 1%
Drinking several cups of coffee every day may be linked to a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, suggests a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Each additional daily cup of the brew was associated with a reduction in relative risk of nearly 1%, the findings indicate.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer, and the sixth leading cause of cancer death in men. Nearly three out of four cases occur in the developed world, and since the 1970s, new cases of the disease have risen sharply in Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore, and China.
Coffee consumption has been linked to a lower relative risk of liver, bowel, and breast cancers, but as yet, there is no conclusive evidence for its potential role in prostate cancer risk reduction.
In a bid to advance understanding of the issue, the researchers trawled research databases for relevant cohort studies published up to September 2020.
They pooled the data from 16: 15 reported on the risk of prostate cancer associated with the highest, compared with the lowest, coffee consumption; 13 reported on the risk associated with an additional daily cup. The highest level of consumption ranged from 2 to 9 or more cups a day; the lowest level ranged from none to fewer than 2 cups a day.
The included studies were carried out in North America (7), Europe (7) and Japan (2). They included more than 1 million men (1,081, 586) of whom 57,732 developed prostate cancer.
Compared with the lowest category of coffee consumption, the highest category was associated with a reduction in prostate cancer risk of 9%. And each additional daily cup was associated with a reduction in risk of 1%.
Further refining the analysis to localised and advanced prostate cancer, showed that compared with the lowest intake, the highest intake was associated with a 7% lower risk of localised prostate cancer, and a 12%-16% lower risk for advanced and fatal prostate cancer, respectively.
Release date: 11 January 2021
Source: BMJ
NSAIDs Might Exacerbate or Suppress COVID-19 Depending on Timing
New research shows that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs – NSAIDs reduced both antibody and inflammatory responses to COVID-19 infection in mice. The study appears this week in the Journal of Virology, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.
The research is important because “NSAIDs are arguably the most commonly used anti-inflammatory medications,” said principal investigator Craig B. Wilen, Assistant Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Immunology, Yale University School of Medicine.
In addition to taking NSAIDs for chronic conditions such as arthritis, people take them “for shorter periods of time during infections, and [during] acute inflammation as experienced with COVID-19, and for side effects from vaccination, such as soreness, fever, and malaise,” said Dr. Wilen. “Our work suggests that the NSAID meloxicam dampens the immune response to COVID-19 infection.” The research also suggests that the consequences of NSAID use during natural infection and vaccination should be evaluated in humans, said Dr. Wilen. “This data likely exists, particularly in the clinical trials for the vaccines, so it should be mined to see if it produces antibody responses in people.”
Release date: 22 January 2021
Source: American Society for Microbiology
Street trees close to the home may reduce the risk of depression
Street trees near the home may reduce the risk to suffer from depression
More trees immediately around the home (less than 100 meters) was associated with a reduced risk of being prescribed antidepressant medication. This association was especially strong for socioeconomically disadvantaged groups. As these social groups are at the greatest risk for being prescribed antidepressants in Germany, street trees in cities can thereby serve as a nature-based solution for good mental health, the researchers write. At the same time, street trees may also help reduce the ‘gap’ in health inequality between economically different social groups. No association of tree types, however, and depression could be shown in this study.
Urban street tree biodiversity and antidepressant prescriptions, Scientific Reports.
Release date: 25 January 2021
Source: German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig
People more likely to follow Covid-19 rules when friends and family do
New research has shown that people are more likely to follow Covid-19 rules based on what their friends and family do, rather than their own principles.
Research led by the University of Nottingham carried out in partnership with experts in collective behaviour from British, French, German and American universities shows how social influence affects people’s adherance to government restrictions. The researchers found that the best predictor of people’s compliance to the rules was how much their close circle complied with the rules, which had an even stronger effect than people’s own approval of the rules.
The research published in British Journal of Psychology highlights a blindspot in policy responses to the pandemic. It also suggests that including experts in human and social behaviour is crucial when planning the next stages of the pandemic response, such as how to ensure that people comply with extended lockdowns or vaccination recommendations.
Release date: 21 January 2021
Source: University of Nottingham
Afternoon napping linked to better mental agility
Associated with better locational awareness, verbal fluency, and working memory
Taking a regular afternoon nap may be linked to better mental agility, suggests research published in the online journal General Psychiatry.
It seems to be associated with better locational awareness, verbal fluency, and working memory, the findings indicate.
Longer life expectancy and the associated neurodegenerative changes that accompany it, raise the prospect of dementia, with around 1 in 10 people over the age of 65 affected in the developed world.
As people age, their sleep patterns change, with afternoon naps becoming more frequent. But research published to date hasn’t reached any consensus on whether afternoon naps might help to stave off cognitive decline and dementia in older people or whether they might be a symptom of dementia.
Release date: 25 January 2021
Source: BMJ
Mothers, but not fathers, with multiple children report more fragmented sleep
Mothers with multiple children report more fragmented sleep than mothers of a single child, but the number of children in a family doesn’t seem to affect the quality of sleep for fathers, according to a study from McGill University.
A total of 111 parents (54 couples and 3 mothers of single-parent families) participated in the study published in the Journal of Sleep Research led by McGill doctoral student Samantha Kenny under the supervision of Marie-Hélène Pennestri, Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology.
Participants’ sleep patterns were studied for two weeks. Mothers with one baby reported having less interrupted and better-quality sleep than mothers with more than one child, although the total amount of sleep did not differ depending on the number of children. No difference was noted in fathers.
Release date: 12 January 2021
Source: McGill University
MIND and Mediterranean diets associated with later onset of Parkinson’s disease
A new study from UBC researchers suggests a strong correlation between following the MIND and Mediterranean diets and later onset of Parkinson’s disease (PD). While researchers have long known of neuroprotective effects of the MIND diet for diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, this study is the first to suggest a link between this diet and brain health for Parkinson’s disease (PD). The MIND diet combines aspects of two very popular diets, the Mediterranean diet and the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet.
“The study shows individuals with Parkinson’s disease have a significantly later age of onset if their eating pattern closely aligns with the Mediterranean-type diet. The difference shown in the study was up to 17 years later in women and eight years later in men,” says Dr. Silke Appel-Cresswell of the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre, the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health and the Division of Neurology in the UBC Faculty of Medicine. “There is a lack of medications to prevent or delay Parkinson’s disease yet we are optimistic that this new evidence suggests nutrition could potentially delay onset of the disease.”
In a study of 176 participants, researchers looked at adherence to these types of diets, characterized by reduced meat intake and a focus on vegetables, fruits, whole grains and healthy fats, and the age of PD onset. They found that close adherence to these diets coincided with later onset of PD in women of up to 17.4 years, and 8.4 years in men. The MIND diet showed a more significant impact on women’s health, whereas the Mediterranean diet did for the men. The differences in these two diets are subtle, but could serve as clues to the impacts specific foods and micronutrients may have on brain health.
The different effects of diet adherence between sexes are noteworthy as approximately 60 per cent of those diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease are men.
Movement Disorders
Release date: 13 January 2021
Source: University of British Columbia
Metformin use reduces risk of death for patients with COVID-19 and diabetes
Use of the diabetes drug metformin — before a diagnosis of COVID-19 — is associated with a threefold decrease in mortality in COVID-19 patients with Type 2 diabetes, according to a racially diverse study at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Diabetes is a significant comorbidity for COVID-19.
“This beneficial effect remained, even after correcting for age, sex, race, obesity, and hypertension or chronic kidney disease and heart failure,” said Anath Shalev, M.D., director of UAB’s Comprehensive Diabetes Center and leader of the study.
The study — first made available in MedRxiv and now published in the peer-reviewed journal Frontiers in Endocrinology — included 25,326 patients tested for COVID-19 at the tertiary care UAB Hospital between Feb. 25 and June 22 of last year. Of the 604 patients found to be COVID-19-positive, 311 were African Americans.
Release date: 14 January 2021
Source: University of Alabama at Birmingham
Fatty acid may help combat multiple sclerosis
The abnormal immune system response that causes multiple sclerosis (MS) by attacking and damaging the central nervous system can be triggered by the lack of a specific fatty acid in fat tissue, according to a new Yale study. The finding suggests that dietary change might help treat some people with the autoimmune disease.
The study was published Jan. 19 in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.
Fat tissue in patients diagnosed with MS lack normal levels of oleic acid, a monounsaturated fatty acid found at high levels in, for instance, cooking oils, meats (beef, chicken, and pork), cheese, nuts, sunflower seeds, eggs, pasta, milk, olives, and avocados, according to the study.
This lack of oleic acids leads to a loss of the metabolic sensors that activate T cells, that mediate the immune system’s response to infectious disease, the Yale team found. Without the suppressing effects of these regulatory T cells, the immune system can attack healthy central nervous system cells and cause the vision loss, pain, lack of coordination and other debilitating symptoms of MS.
When researchers introduced oleic acids into the fatty tissue of MS patients in laboratory experiments, levels of regulatory T cells increased, they found.
Release date: 19 January 2021
Source: Yale University
Higher coffee intake may be linked to lower prostate cancer risk
Each additional daily cup associated with reduction in risk of nearly 1%
Drinking several cups of coffee every day may be linked to a lower risk of developing prostate cancer, suggests a pooled data analysis of the available evidence, published in the online journal BMJ Open.
Each additional daily cup of the brew was associated with a reduction in relative risk of nearly 1%, the findings indicate.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer, and the sixth leading cause of cancer death in men. Nearly three out of four cases occur in the developed world, and since the 1970s, new cases of the disease have risen sharply in Asian countries, including Japan, Singapore, and China.
Coffee consumption has been linked to a lower relative risk of liver, bowel, and breast cancers, but as yet, there is no conclusive evidence for its potential role in prostate cancer risk reduction.
In a bid to advance understanding of the issue, the researchers trawled research databases for relevant cohort studies published up to September 2020.
They pooled the data from 16: 15 reported on the risk of prostate cancer associated with the highest, compared with the lowest, coffee consumption; 13 reported on the risk associated with an additional daily cup. The highest level of consumption ranged from 2 to 9 or more cups a day; the lowest level ranged from none to fewer than 2 cups a day.
The included studies were carried out in North America (7), Europe (7) and Japan (2). They included more than 1 million men (1,081, 586) of whom 57,732 developed prostate cancer.
Compared with the lowest category of coffee consumption, the highest category was associated with a reduction in prostate cancer risk of 9%. And each additional daily cup was associated with a reduction in risk of 1%.
Further refining the analysis to localised and advanced prostate cancer, showed that compared with the lowest intake, the highest intake was associated with a 7% lower risk of localised prostate cancer, and a 12%-16% lower risk for advanced and fatal prostate cancer, respectively.
Release date: 11 January 2021
Source: BMJ
Males of all ages more affected by COVID-19 than females
Males are more likely to test positive for COVID-19, more likely to have complications and more likely to die from the virus than females, independent of age, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Farhaan Vahidy of Houston Methodist Research Institute, US, and colleagues.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds and evolves across the globe, researchers have identified population sub-groups with higher levels of disease vulnerability, such as those with advanced age or certain pre-existing conditions. Small studies from China and Europe have indicated that males tend to experience higher disease severity compared to females. However a comprehensive analysis of COVID sex in a large and diverse US metropolitan area has been lacking.
In the new study, researchers used data from a large healthcare provider in the Houston, Texas metropolitan area to determine the associations between sex and COVID-19 epidemiology. Data on COVID testing, hospital stays, mortality and demographics were extracted from Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) of all 96,496 adults over 18 years old who were tested for SARS-CoV-2 by the health system between March 6 and August 22, 2020.
Publicly-available article: PLOS
Release date: 14 January 2021
Source: Newswise